 Technicians at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Va., mated the components of the Inflatable Reentry Vehicle Experiment into the nosecone and sounding rocket. Credit: NASA/Kathy Barnstorff. For a larger version of this image please go here. |
NASA technicians and engineers are putting the finishing touches on a
unique experiment designed to demonstrate that an inflatable
aeroshell/heat shield could be used to protect spacecraft when entering a
planet's atmosphere or returning here to Earth.
Workers from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Virginia's Eastern Shore and NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., are preparing the Inflatable Reentry Vehicle Experiment (IRVE-3) for launch from Wallops as early as July 21.
IRVE-3 is one of NASA's many research efforts to develop new technologies to advance space travel. It's part of the Hypersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator or HIAD project - within the NASA Space Technology Program's Game Changing Development Program.
"We have developed a 10-foot (3 meters) diameter heat shield that we are packing - uninflated - into the 22-inch (56 centimeters) diameter nose cone of a three-stage Black Brant XI sounding rocket," said Robert Dillman, IRVE-3 chief engineer. The inflated structure will protect a payload that consists of four segments including the inflation system, steering mechanisms, telemetry equipment and camera gear.
Read More...........
Workers from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Virginia's Eastern Shore and NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., are preparing the Inflatable Reentry Vehicle Experiment (IRVE-3) for launch from Wallops as early as July 21.
IRVE-3 is one of NASA's many research efforts to develop new technologies to advance space travel. It's part of the Hypersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator or HIAD project - within the NASA Space Technology Program's Game Changing Development Program.
"We have developed a 10-foot (3 meters) diameter heat shield that we are packing - uninflated - into the 22-inch (56 centimeters) diameter nose cone of a three-stage Black Brant XI sounding rocket," said Robert Dillman, IRVE-3 chief engineer. The inflated structure will protect a payload that consists of four segments including the inflation system, steering mechanisms, telemetry equipment and camera gear.
Read More...........
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